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DREAM OR PROPHECY ?
l. The unusual tension between spiritual tradition of the classical inheritance and the Benedictine world. Between the great and ancient Benedictine tradition, imposing tradition of one of the biggest Christians religious community and the spiritual tradition of the ancient inheritance, there is necessarily a particular tension, but quite a similar relationship of tension could conduct to an accord, a fruitful accord.
A fundamental component of the Benedictine institution is the personality of Benedict.However, is not after all, we could ask, a kind of paradox to speak of Benedictine humanism? What would tell St Benedict himself about that? Now, Benedict is of distinguished descent (landowner nobility), subsequent stories tell us, he his son of the ancient and noble Roman family Anici. About six centuries before his birth, in the II century [B.C]. circles of the Roman aristocracy saw realized in the Greek spirit that human way that they themselves tried to reach in their life. Then, in such matter, it seem they have coined the beautiful term humanitas, not harmless in his indeterminateness; all the spiritual formations and all the learned works must be the way to be humanum, that is for what a decent and civic man must be. From the IV up to the VI century, AC the senatorial nobility has the biggest merit in the same field: the maintenance of the classical Romans and of the translation and diffusion of the essential Greek literature, above all philosophy. The rescue of the Greek inheritance and with that the continuity of the intellectual culture therefore owes thanks to the pro-
During the VI century, Italy and a big part of the Western world was upset by a violent crisis, Gothic wars, struggle of the Byzantine Empire against the ancient Rome, the invasions of the Longobard, etc. Where did they find their shelter the literary treasures until then preserved, the ancient authors and the introductory writings to the so-
In 529, Benedict founded on the Mount Cassino, on the ruins of an ancient Temple of Apollo, his monastery. The panic to escape from the world which the Oriental monachism tended, here has left the place to a stable arrangement, in which surely lives something of the ancient Roman spirit. Together with the prayer the work is regulated, manual work, but also intellectual
2. Mount Cassino and Vivarium; Gregory the Great.
On the other hand, the regula Benedicti contains only the prescription of the lectio divina, the spiritual reading, no nod to that litterae humanae that we have mentioned, to the maintenance and the copy of books like monastic duty. Now, little after the year 540 a little bit more to southeast of Mount Cassino, an other meaningful monastic foundation, work of a rich land owner took place, whose family belonged from generations to the highest nobility of the Roman officials. Cassiodoro, the founder, has not become monk in first person and his monastery of Vivarium was not subjected to the regula Benedicti.The founder has given to his monastery rules; he called them Institutiones, dispositions for spiritual work. Half of them are dedicated to that litterae humanae, and here is made the decisive step to include the seven liberal arts, the artes, in the Christian formation, and even monastic formation.
In the other part of his book litterae divinae, a chapter concerns the sublimity of the job of copyist. Yes, the hands, the fingers of the copyists are praised like blessed. A monastery with a similar educational tension was something completely new, and the Institutiones of Cassiodoro as dispositions for the monastic life did mark a new epoch.
Both foundations, however, were in an epoch of terrible violence, in an epoch of destruction without measure, fury and terror comparable only to our time. Mount Cassino was destroyed for the first time in 581 and Vivarium, Cassiodoro's monastery ,went in ruin for ever before the end of the same century. The horror of the time emerges in a very terrible way in a letter of , Pope Gregory the First that for a good reason is called the Great. To difference of Cassiodoro, he (Gregory the Great), came down really from the ancient nobil family of the Anici, declared the litterae humanae, the saeculares, that is all that is profane, futility without value, nugae. It is placed entirely on the line of Agustine and of S. Benedict, of which he wrote a life.
Observing Rome he proclaims: "Rome is uninhabited and in flames, the senate is no more, the people goes in downfall. However, why speak about men when we see how the works of destruction spread, buildings disappear? The pot in which first meat and bones had been consumed, become red-
Gregory was not only a rhetor of ancient stature, he was-
3. The diffusion of the Benedictine institution in Europe (outline).
Those monks were indeed not only the saviors and the silent custodians in an ugly epoch, but also divulgers of the ancient good, waiting for better days; very curious and strange paths crossed close to the first, but here we could not talk about them. Only one thing: those Benedictines monks that Gregory the Great had sent from Rome to England, arrived in places that were not touched by barbaric invasions; the monasteries founded, the schools, the libraries, could develop unmolested.
From the Benedictine order originates two figures from the VII century to the VIII century: Beda the Venerable, that in his historical writings and also grammatical-S. Boniface had a deeper influence than any English of an any epoch did on the continent. But this great ecclesiastical organizer in France and Germany praises the acquaintance of the liberal arts, scientiam artium liberalium; he himself has compiled a grammatical work and metrics, show himself little petrified when precisely in our land of Bavaria had the occasion to hear the formula of Baptism in the form: Baptizo te in nomine patria et filia et Spiritus Sancta; he didn't know even if this was a valid baptism. To S. Boniface is owed the foundations of monasteries like Hersfeld and Fulda, also if he personally did not make the foundation of them; these monasteries had libraries with classical ancient manuscripts of inestimable value, and they had their schools. In the following Carolingian epoch, safer and centralized, Alcuino of York goes on the noble tradition of his brothers, that of his countryman Beda in his writings and that of Boniface in administration rich of success. From the Schola Palatina in Aquisgrana he turns his special attention to the monastic schools, and with him begin approximately about 800 a true aetas benedictina , justly has been said, a Benedictine epoch, that stretches centuries from the IX century to the end of the XII century. Now there is also a reproach that some children of S. Benedict has less present the Regula of their Father that the regulae Donati, that is the rules of the Latin grammar. In addition, we will see that this reproach has become a common place, that is repeated along the history perhaps up to our days. The humanism of the Renaissance is much debtor towards the monastic orders, and in a particular way to the Benedictines. If they did not guarded the classical inheritance, cultivating it and spreading it by means of the activity of copying, Petrarca and his successors would have uselessly undertaken their trips of exploration. The humanists have certainly open a new epoch with a linguistic sensibility completely different for the poetic work, for example of Virgilio, and with an impassioned hurry for the comprehension of the human individual nature, for instance of Cicero. However, monasteries and their schools took this renewal of studia humanitatis that spread from Italy in many ways. Really, a true epoch of rebirth of Benedictine studies was not in any other place except in France, where the spirit of the [umanisme dévot] prepared the road for it. The big congregation of Maurini called with the name of the favorite disciple of S. Benedict himself, S. Mauro, formed in the XVII and XVIII century, a silent line of learned workers, for most anonymous, they finished the monumental edition of all the Fathers of the Latin and Greek Church initiated by ErasmoIn addition, around the country was broadly disseminated a number not small of excellent secular schools, thing that is almost ignored. The reproach-
The Revolution in France, the Enlightenment in Austria the secularization in the countries that were under the influence of Napoleon, like Bavaria, swept away, like a furious hurricane, monasteries as well Jesuits colleges.
The circumstances of the suppressions and of the restoration in the XIX century, up to the changes connected to the vocational and ecclesiastical dynamic of the century just concluded, would be better run through following national layouts. What reported here is enough to understand how the thesis of the Author that we have followed-
4. Cultura animi, that is: illuminatio animi forever
Behind the temporal fate, mutable, it revealed I hope something lasting, indestructible: desinunt ista, not pereunt. The Benedictine monachism, if I do not err, has tried in all the epochs, to follow faithfully the wish of the founder, to respect a correct middle way. We do not find an excessive mystical practice, neither spiritual fanaticism, neither a rigorism that refuses thing from outside, on the contrary a characteristic opening, receptivity, as we have already said. English Benedictine, who has written in very convincing way about his Order, has dared speak about a "liberty of Benedictine spirit.” To that is connected the joy for books and the worldly realities and that “modesta hilaritas”, that cheerfulness with moderation, that in a certain way was already admitted in the Regula. It is not therefore so amazing, as it appeared in a first place, that this Order has picked up, like no other, what from the ancient, like for instance Cicero, was considered the way for a true human civilization, for the humanum, in other words the literary formation and the erudite studies. It is perhaps a normal evolution that the original manual job, above all the agri cultura of the first family of S. Benedict, do have changed in a cultura animi. The ancient humanitas was adverse to each exaggeration and excess, tended to meekness, to internal peace, to composed joy; it had always been a part of his duties, of his officia, to communicate the spiritual possession achieved and to transmit to other cultura animi. It is not therefore a paradox, to return to the initial question, talk about the Benedictine humanism. To look at the past centuries has pointed out like a historical fact, and the general considerations like something of absolutely comprehensible and sensible. Above all: transmit the cultura animi, cultivate the human soul, -
That cultura animi, that humanistic formation, (…) it must not be a weight for their memory, a weight that one day they will throw away with lightness, on the contrary an illumination of the soul, a illuminatio animi forever.
5. In addition, a dream of today: the [scriptorium] for a reception of high quality.
From the sociological point of view, the Western world has lost the convictions and the safeties of a traditional pre modern society. A position exists relative on the actual sciences of humanistic type: philosophers, history, psychologist, sociology and it exists, to the contrary, a great respect for knowledge and research of technical and experimental type of that which are centered on the macrocosm-.As far as it is known more or less of the different social groups and the individuals could have of this knowledge, induces to a dismay, a shattering of all the social-
All these transformations and overturn could not leave uninjured neither the society neither the individual. The human person risks “roaming” and being lost in the multiform reality that surrounds it. Out of the gravitational circle that maintains the bodies in orbit, all the atoms lose themselves in space and follow each his own trajectory up to lose themselves in the infinite. There is no need to insist on the ideals of the post modern. They are well known. However, we must remember them, always follow and deepened them because each monastic community could extend to create a world to oneself, little attentive to the human and psychological situation that marks the candidates of today and tomorrow, they will form our community in the future. Each monastery, instead, should live in the awareness of the social-The monastery should become a welcoming hearth of high quality, what supposes a devotion of youngest to a mystical practice of study, to personal ampler and deep formation, such that it could give a cultured and wise testimony of their being monks in the future. I in this way see a possible passage from the pastoral activity of the monks in the sense of parish service, to a monastic irradiation.
I see the monasteries of the future, busy in the formation of young people and the demand to form small cells in the community, like seminars of study and of wisdom that are the true actual expression of their own job of monastic life. Beyond the lectio, with all his values in so much excited ways, a serious study of the Sacred Word is needed, also theology and ecclesiastical sciences according to programs of academic level. The monks should orient themselves, particularly, to deepen that knowledge founded on the study of letters, thought and history, that is the base of the Western culture and deep search of the Sacred Scripture and theology. This orientation of the job in the monastery assembles the activity of the monks around the library, stimulate the responsibility of the researcher and favors the silence and the stability necessary, on the other hand, for a profitable monastic irradiation.
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(RUDOLF PFEIFFER, Humanitas Benedectina in ID. Ausgewahlte Schriften, Munchen MCMLX, p. 175)